


The Courage to Talk About It

by Ellie603



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (but most importantly fluff), F/M, Fluff and Angst, and cute StaticQuake just because, because who cares about the stupid cosmos, post 3x08 confrontation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 09:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5285357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellie603/pseuds/Ellie603
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>I can’t do this, Jemma thought to herself, turning to go back to her research room, but then words from a week ago drifted through her mind.</em> </p><p>“We had years side-by-side, it never occurred to us. And then when it does, we don’t have the courage to talk about it.”</p><p>  <em>Jemma took a deep breath. She couldn't make this mistake again.</em></p><p>A week after her and Fitz's confrontation in the lab, Jemma (with a little bit of help) figures out what she has to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Courage to Talk About It

**Author's Note:**

> Because last week's episode literally killed me, here's a nice little fix-it to try to deal with everything. 
> 
> (Why can't they just let Fitzsimmon be happy? I mean seriously... but we got so much great stuff out of that scene so I can't complain too much.)
> 
> Enjoy!!!!

Jemma shrunk back in her seat as Fitz passed by the window of the room where she had been cooped up working for nearly a week. She hadn’t been back to the lab since that day… the day Fitz had kissed her and she had kissed him back.

They hadn’t talked about it afterward. First, Jemma had found the Hydra picture in the book (which she had knocked off the table trying to steady herself as Fitz pulled her in for the most passionate kiss of her life), and they’d had to put it all together and show the team. Since then it had just been days of searching for clues and digging up dirt on NASA and trying to find out where Gideon Malick had taken Andrew. She and Fitz were at the head of the other world portal issue, since they had been doing all the research on it up to that point, but Jemma had been giving Fitz some space, letting him use the lab while she paged through books and did research with help from Daisy who had no trouble getting past all of NASA’s web protection. They had found references to the program that Will had been a part of, but all of the actual information appeared to be separate from NASA, somewhere deep in Hydra’s system, which was just a bit harder for Daisy to crack. She had promised Jemma that she would figure this out, and then she’d smiled to herself saying she was glad to be hacking again, that she’d missed it with all the Inhuman stuff she’d been doing. 

Lincoln often came by while Daisy was typing away and Jemma was flipping through book after book. He and the rest of the team, minus Jemma, Daisy, and Fitz, had been going on missions trying to track down Ward and Malick using any intell they could gather from Rosalind. May was apparently continuing to choose Lincoln as her partner for team assignments, and the arrangement seemed to suit them both. Whenever he wasn’t off base, however, Lincoln would stop by to see Daisy. He cared about her a lot, Jemma could see, maybe loved her even. There was a good deal of flirting and Lincoln staring adoring at Daisy as she blasted past firewalls, and once Jemma had left the room to grab something from her bunk and had come back to find her friends kissing very heatedly against the wall of their research room, causing Jemma to return to the hallway, pretend she hadn’t seen anything, and then come back into the room again very loudly and exaggeratedly to give her friends some time to collect themselves. 

Jemma really couldn’t begrudge Daisy the happiness. Lincoln _was_ very sweet and helpful and he _clearly_ cared about Daisy. But, at the same time, it reminded Jemma so acutely of what she was missing. Just a few days before, it had been _Fitz_ kissing _her_ up against a lab table like that. Not that she needed the kissing (though it had been nice… more than nice really, far _far_ beyondmerely nice), but it was the rest of it. The way Lincoln would bring Daisy a latte when he knew she’d been up late. How he would stare at her when he thought she wasn’t looking. How he rested his hand just barely across her back as she did her research. And then how Daisy would smile subconsciously when Lincoln entered the room, even on days when there were more setbacks that breakthroughs. How she would make explanations extra technical just to mess with him and then offer a wink to let him know she was joking. How they would just talk in low voices, reassuring each other that everything was going to be okay. That reassurance, that comfort, that support – that’s what Jemma missed most. Fitz had always been there for her. Except now he wasn’t. And it was all her fault.

Jemma let out a breath as Fitz’s outline passed out of her line of sight. It was only Daisy in with her today, Lincoln off on a mission with May. Jemma shook her head and tried to go back to her work.

A laptop slammed shut, causing Jemma to look up. 

Daisy was staring at her, her arms folded as though waiting for an explanation. “Okay, Jemma. What’s going on?” 

Jemma blinked. “Nothing,” she said, too quickly. 

Daisy rolled her eyes. “I’ve known you for a while now, Jemma. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at telling when something’s wrong with you.” 

Jemma shrugged and looked down at her book. “You know. Everyone knows.” 

It was true. The kiss may have been a secret, but everything with Will had been gossip around the base for weeks. It had garnered her sympathetic looks from Bobbi and less than sympathetic ones from Hunter, but, for the most part, it just meant that everyone was avoiding her, which Jemma didn’t particularly mind.

“Something’s changed in the last week,” Daisy said, still probing. “I know it’s been kind of weird since the whole Will thing, but everything was fine with you and Fitz until you figured out that stuff about Hydra. Bobbi and Hunter agree with me, and they’ve been around you guys more than any of the rest of us.” 

“It doesn’t matter, Daisy,” Jemma replied with as much sincerity as she could manage. “Just drop it.” Jemma could feel tears coming to her eyes. 

“Jemma.” Her friend’s voice was softer now. 

Jemma heard movement, and, a moment later, there was a warm hand running up and down her back soothingly. 

“You don’t have to do everything alone.” Daisy rested her head on Jemma’s shoulder for a moment. “Talk to me.”

Silence stretched between them as Jemma tried to hold herself together. 

“He thinks we’re cursed,” she cried out finally, unable to stop the tears from escaping. “He thinks the cosmos wants us to be apart.” 

“Fitz?” Daisy asked, unsure, pulling over a chair so she could sit down properly next to Jemma. 

Jemma nodded, still staring down at the book in front of her. “He was being too good and too helpful and I told him to stop and get mad, and he just proved how _perfect_ he is. All he did was say nice things. He asked me if I loved Will, and I couldn’t _lie_ ,and even then he wasn’t mad at me. He just said of course I loved him. But it’s not that simple, Daisy!” Jemma finally looked up at her friend, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I mean he even knows about Perthshire.” 

“Perthshire?” Daisy repeated, the word clearly unfamiliar on her tongue. 

“It’s in Scotland,” Jemma explained. “There’s a cottage there I saw when I was little and I’ve always sort of tucked it away for someday, but then I met Fitz and before I even realized it, my someday wasn’t just a cottage in Scotland, it was a cottage in Scotland with _Fitz_. I told him that, in a video I recorded on that other planet. I missed Fitz so much when I was there. I talked to him _all_ the time. And now Fitz knows. He listened to everything I said when I was there, but he still doesn’t understand. He keeps comparing himself to Will, and I can’t take it. But that’s not even the worst part.” Jemma paused as sobs wracked her body. She curled her legs up into her chair and hugged them to herself. 

Daisy wrapped her arms more tightly around Jemma, but said nothing, waiting for her to continue. 

 “He-” Jemma paused and then started again. “He kissed me.” She took a deep breath. “And I kissed him back.” 

Jemma felt Daisy freeze at her words and then move away from her.

Jemma looked up, worried about how her friend was going to respond. 

Daisy was staring at her, a wide grin spreading across her face. “No. Way. You guys KISSED?” She started laughing hysterically, shaking her head in disbelief. “You waited for us to clear the base and then got _busy_.” Daisy wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. 

Jemma glared at her friend, though she was unable to stop the smallest of smiles from tugging at the corner of her lips. “It wasn’t like that!” 

“You kissed _Fitz_ ,” Daisy said, sitting back in her chair, still shaking her head. “It finally happened.” She shot Jemma a mischievous smile. “So how was it?” 

Jemma rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up.” But she was powerless to stop the memory of Fitz’s lips on hers as he pressed her up against the lab table and wrapped his arms around her back. “But it _was_ amazing.” 

“Yeah, Fitz!” Daisy clapped her hands together in excitement. 

“But then he said we were cursed.” The memory brought Jemma crashing back to reality. She would have loved to gossip with Daisy about kissing Fitz, but that was for another life, one in which Fitz wasn’t convinced the cosmos was trying to separate them. 

Daisy narrowed her eyes, stopping her celebration. “So you guys kissed and _then_ he said you were cursed? What?” 

Jemma sniffled. 

Daisy sighed. “Jemma, you have to talk to him. Tell him how you feel.” 

Jemma threw her hands into the air. “But I don’t know how I feel! I love Will; I have to after everything we went through. But when I stop to think about the future it’s just Fitz, and it doesn’t even have to be Perthshire, but it’s always Fitz. He matters more to me than anything.”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. 

Finally Daisy stood up. “Sounds like you know _exactly_ how you feel.” She walked over to the doorway. “Talk to him, Jemma. You need to.” 

“Daisy, wait!” Jemma called before the door shut behind her friend. 

Daisy stepped back inside the room, her eyebrows raised. 

“Thank you,” Jemma said, trying to express just how grateful she really was. “And, I haven’t said it before, but you and Lincoln are really great together.” 

Daisy’s face fell immediately. “Oh my God, you’ve been going through all this stuff with Fitz and I’ve basically just been rubbing Lincoln in your face. I’m so sor-”

“Stop,” Jemma interrupted. “It’s fine. I’m really happy that you’re happy.” 

Daisy smiled softly. “Thanks, Jemma. I hope you can be happy too.” 

Jemma took a deep breath. “Maybe I can be.” 

* * *

Jemma stood outside the lab, trying to work up the courage to step inside. Just like she had been doing for the past ten minutes. She was glad most of the base was off on assignment. She would have been mortified if Coulson or Hunter or, God-forbid, _Mack_ had been watching her as she approached the lab and then walked away only to approach it again and then stop by the door. The only good thing about her being too afraid to go to Fitz was that it was giving her time to figure out what she was going to say to him. She’d actually managed to put together a bit of a speech. 

She could see him huddled over his computer screen through the glass. He was definitely focused on whatever it was he was working on; he hadn’t so much as glanced up from the screen in the ten minutes she’d been there. The lab itself was mercifully empty. If Jemma managed to get herself inside, at least they would be alone. 

 _I can’t do this,_ Jemma thought to herself, turning to go back to her research room, but then words from a week ago drifted through her mind. 

_“We had years side-by-side, it never occurred to us. And then when it does, we don’t have the courage to talk about it.”_

Jemma took a deep breath. She couldn't make this mistake again.

She opened the door and stepped inside. 

“Fitz?” 

Jemma could see his shoulders tense up as she said his name. 

“Could we, maybe, talk… er… now?” Jemma cringed at how unsure she sounded, but she stood her ground, fighting the urge to run from the lab.

Fitz turned around to face her, his face impassive. He inclined his head slightly letting her know he was listening. 

Jemma took another deep breath and then launched into the speech she had prepared outside the lab. “You say that we’re cursed,” she began. “You say that the cosmos doesn’t want us to be together. But I can’t see why that matters. You can say the cosmos tried to take you away from me at the bottom of the ocean, but I pulled you back and you _lived._ And you can say that the cosmos pushed me away when you were having so much trouble with the hypoxia and aphasia but then the S.H.I.E.L.D. coup pushed us back together again. You can say that the cosmos pulled me across the universe to another planet, but you brought me back, Fitz; you brought me _home_.” Her words were running together as she spoke more and more rapidly. “Sure it might seem like we’re cursed, like the cosmos is out to get us, but look at everything, Fitz. You kissed me in the lab the other day. And I kissed you back. Because no matter what we’ve been through, no matter what the cosmos wants, you and I found our way back to each other every time. That counts for something, doesn’t it, Fitz?” 

Jemma paused. This was the big moment. “I love you more than the cosmos can pull you away from me.” She stopped again, letting her words sink in. 

Fitz was staring at her, wide-eyed, as though he had never truly seen her before. 

Jemma pressed on. “And yes, I love Will too. And I’m so sorry for that, Fitz; you don’t deserve that. But the way I love Will… it isn’t the way I love you. It’s different. It was more survival and trying to make it through the darkness with someone. And I say that I love him because I did while we were there and I still do now that we’re apart, but I don’t know how I’m going to feel when we get him back here. Maybe there won’t be anything for us to talk about without us running for our lives or calculating out the days until there’s a sunrise.” She knew she was rambling, but she didn’t care. “I don’t know. But what I do know, right now, is that if the only thing standing against you and me is the cosmos, then that shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve defied it before, and we’ll defy it again. Because I love you, Fitz. I’ve loved you for a really long time.” 

Jemma stopped, breathing heavily. That was all she’d prepared to say. She stared down at Fitz, silently begging him to say something, _anything_. 

Fitz stood up and moved away from her, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, a gesture so familiar to Jemma that it almost made her smile. 

Finally he turned back to her. His eyes were sad. “And what if Will comes back and everything’s fine Jemma?” he asked finally. “What’s going to happen then?” 

“Nothing,” Jemma replied without hesitation. “Nothing’s going to happen because it doesn’t matter.” 

“Doesn’t matter?” Fitz put his head in his hands. “Of course it matters Jemma! He’s perfect, and you love him. That’s all there is.” 

“He’s not perfect, and even if he was that wouldn’t be all there is,” Jemma fired back. “Fitz, how could you even _think_ that I’d let him get between us? I knew him over there for five months. I’ve known you _eleven years_. So, I love him. But there’s no way it could ever compare to… to _you,_ Fitz.” Jemma stopped, remembering what she had told Daisy before. “I can live without him, but I can’t live without you.” 

“You did.” Fitz’s words cut through her like a knife. It was true. 

“I’m so sorry I gave up hope, Fitz,” Jemma said quietly, hanging her head. “I just… I thought I would never see you again. When that bottle smashed against the cliff, that was it. My phone was out of power. I had no way to find another portal opening. You were lost forever.” Jemma blinked back tears, the memories of that horrible day filling her mind. She looked up to see Fitz staring back at her, the hurt in his eyes overshadowed by his concern for her. He was just so _good_. What had she ever done to deserve him? 

She took a step toward him. “But that’s all in the past now, Fitz. Because in this world where you’re here and I’m here… if there is any possible way that I can be with you, Fitz, that’s what I have to do. I’m sorry that I still love him, but I love you more. No one could ever mean more to me than you, Fitz. There isn’t any way I can think of this that doesn’t end up like that. I don’t want to hurt Will, but the idea of spending my life without you… I can’t even fathom it Fitz. I can imagine a life without Will, but I can’t imagine a life without you.” She paused. “Perthshire, remember?”

Fitz shook his head slightly. “Is that really what you-” 

“Yes,” Jemma interrupted before Fitz could finish. “That’s what I want.” 

Fitz finally looked up at her fully. “And Will?” His face fell slightly. “We have to save him, especially now that Hydra’s involved.” 

Jemma smiled softly at Fitz’s continued selflessness, even after all this. “We’ll save him, but that’s it for me. I hate having to hurt him, but it’s the only way this works.” She sighed. “Because it’s you, Fitz. Of course, it’s you. How could it be anything else?” 

She took another hesitant step toward him.

Fitz stared pacing again. “But how could you forget Will, Jemma? He saved your life and gave you hope and all of that. He’s perfect. I’m…”

“More than that,” Jemma filled in, reaching out to take his hand and stop him in front of her. 

Fitz’s eyes widened as he turned to stare at her. Those three little words held so much meaning for them. 

Jemma took one last leap and closed the distance between them, reaching up to rest her hand on Fitz’s chest. “We’re not cursed, Fitz.” 

Fitz’s eyes fell to her lips and then moved back up to meet her eyes. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “No. We’re not.” 

And again, Fitz’s lips came crashing down to meet Jemma’s. This time she was prepared for it. She ran one hand through his hair as the other traced along his cheek. She felt him pull her even closer, eliminating any space between them. This kiss was as passionate and intense as their first one, but, at the same time, it was less frantic and more hopeful. Their first kisses had felt like a goodbye, but this one held the promise of more. More kisses. More time spent together in the lab. Dinners. Breakfasts. Lives spent side by side. A cottage in Perthshire and an endless future, just for them. 

Fitz pulled back and leaded his forehead against hers. Jemma opened her eyes warily, afraid of what she was going to see. They had been here before, and that had ended badly. 

But instead of the hopelessness she was afraid of, Jemma was greeted with a smile and eyes filled with so much love that she felt her knees go weak. Fitz’s hand came up to stroke her cheek so lightly it was as though he thought she was going to disappear if he touched her properly. She leaned into his hand to assure him that no, she wasn’t going anywhere. A smile played on her lips that she knew matched his. 

“I love you, Fitz,” she said softly, needed him to hear the words again. 

His smile grew somehow wider as he leaned in to kiss her again. “I love you, Jemma. I love you so much.” 

Jemma laughed and threw her arms around his neck, holding him as tightly as she could. “I’m sorry I took so long,” she said into his shoulder, needing him to know. 

Fitz moved back so he could kiss her forehead and look into her eyes. “I’d do it all again if it led us here. Curses and all.” 

Jemma shook her head and pressed a light kiss to Fitz’s lips. “And you call yourself a scientist.” 

Before Fitz could reply (or Jemma could cut off his sure-to-be-poor defense with another kiss) there was a commotion in the hallway. 

Jemma and Fitz looked up to see Daisy grinning widely outside the door to the lab. Lincoln, Hunter, Bobbi, and the rest of the team were standing all around her, their faces exhibiting varying degrees of shock and excitement. 

“This was all me!” Jemma could hear Daisy saying loudly to the rest of their friends. 

Fitz looked down at Jemma, furrowing his brow.

“I _may_ have had a talk with Daisy before I came in here,” Jemma said sheepishly. 

Fitz shook his head, laughing in spite of himself. 

Jemma grinned back at him, feeling more happy and at peace than she had felt in probably years. 

Fitz’s eyes locked with hers and then flicked to their audience at the door for the briefest second. 

“Screw it,” he said quietly and then pulled Jemma back to him. 

She could hear the whoops and catcalls of their friends outside the lab as their lips came together, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. This was going to be her and Fitz for the rest of their lives, so the team might as well get used to it.


End file.
